


The Falling Kind

by arghthecat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Consent is Sexy, M/M, Questioning Sexuality, Teacher AU, ayyy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 18:26:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14857931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arghthecat/pseuds/arghthecat
Summary: AU: Sam decides to defer law school to become a teacher in New Orleans. He's not sure what he's actually doing there or what he's looking for. But he meets the art teacher who keeps sending paintings his way like love tokens and a barrage of cynical veterans who probably shouldn't even be teaching with how much they try to convince Sam that he should just quit. Sam starts to think the same but finds that there other reasons besides proving John wrong to stay.Or, a story told in festivals.





	The Falling Kind

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd!

This...was a mistake. 

Sam knew it the moment he'd stepped into the classroom, decorated in superhero memorabilia because Dean would never allow the subtle polka dots Sam had originally chosen if he'd expected his brother to help and keep his pride in check. He knew it from the incessant nagging at the back of his brain to 'abort mission' when he'd seen the feral grin from an alarmingly large 8th grader in his class. He’d even known it in the interview when they’d asked him questions that no one who’d never taught a class in their life could possibly know and he’d still gotten the job. He was still questioning the hell out of that one. 

But no, he'd known it long before then but still too late to stop the train labeled "first stop: Sam's colossal fuckup” from boarding and leaving the station. The deferment was a done deal, not that the relief that his dream of becoming a lawyer wasn’t completely washed wasn’t like a physical tether grounding him in reality, but the feeling that this was worse than his decision to stupidly kiss Henry Krauss back instead of pushing him off like he knew he should’ve still prickled at the back of his consciousness incessantly. 

This was almost like that except definitively more life changing because that wasn't even a blip on his radar as he was a decidedly heterosexual male secure enough in his masculinity to objectively acknowledge that just trying a car didn't mean you had to buy. Hell you didn't even need a car. A bike would still do the job. He could even walk. Walking was much simpler and much safer. 

But Sam never did safe and he enjoyed the feeling of going headlong into a decision until he realized that getting out of said decision would constitute other major life changes. And moving back home with John absolutely counted as a life change. He wasn’t willing under any circumstances to ever do that. So toughing this out was what his poor Stanford bred heart would have to take. Maybe Sam should have done safe, though. Because moving almost a thousand miles across the country after already having moved two thousand miles an entirely different way was the sort of thing you did for purely selfish reasons at twenty one. Sam was a golden boy and he rarely did selfish like it was a dirty word designated for people who skipped church because they were tired or didn’t bring their kids to soccer practice because fuck the heat today. Going to Stanford wasn’t selfish, even if John had yelled it at him like a curse and even if Dean had felt abandonment in every packed box that lined his bedroom wall. He somehow couldn’t tell his brother that this was for them. He wanted to stick it to John, of course but he’d wanted to show Dean that they could still do things in spite of some crapped up predestined future that’d been lain out for them. Neither one of them had to be mechanics or work dead end jobs in fucking Kansas for the rest of their lives. He wanted to show Dean that he could do it to, if he wanted because telling Dean and showing Dean were two different things. So he’d left. 

And for a while Sam thought that he’d never leave California. Though the people were pretentious in a way Sam had only ever seen on “Clueless” and the gross overuse of the word vegan often made his head hurt he’d roll his eyes so hard, the open acceptance of people made it feel like a place he could slot into with ease. 

It’s probably why when Teach Corps had come to recruit on campus he’d been so caught up that he’d been wrapped in instantly. They made it seem he wouldn't be alone and Sam craved familial ties pseudo or not. And when his placement came for New Orleans, he’d felt even more like this was decision he’d made like the rational thinker his professors had forced him to be and not the idealistic hippy that he so obviously was. 

Telling John had been fun. And by fun Sam meant that it was like having hot nails shoved in your eyes repeatedly and then being asked to read a page out of the “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” There had been even more yelling than when he’d gone to Stanford because John had somehow become comfortable with his youngest leaving the family fold and becoming a tight-assed lawyer to put it nicely. But leaving all of that behind to become a teacher had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. So much time wasted, money and just _life_ and John had been done. He’d told Sam if he took the job to never come back because he just couldn’t handle two fuck up sons who had no clue what the hell they wanted out of life and if he wanted to scrape the bottom of the barrel as a damn middle school teacher then he could just as well be a mechanic. Naturally, he signed his name on the contract with gusto. 

It had lit a fire under him though and he wanted to prove John wrong in every single way and adding fucking amazing teacher to the list was a bucket list box he was ready to check, take a picture of, and send to John with a thumbs up and a flower crown. 

It didn’t go quite to plan. But what the hell ever does?

None of that hit him, though, until this moment. But he pushed the remote possibility that this _could_ have been a bad idea down real far into the treasure trove reserved for drunken nights of regret and greeted his first class.

***

It went surprisingly better than the horror stories. He’d been warned and warned and was convinced people were trying to scare him out of the profession before he even tried, but it wasn't that bad. They’d warned him though that there was always a calm before the storm. Sam was good with storms and floods, and fires and if an unholy curse wanted to rain the fuck down he still wouldn’t let them push him away. 

No one threw things at him like they said at least one kid would. Like what’d he’d expected. They actually _listened_ like the syllabus was written by Shakespeare and all in all it was a deceptively tranquil first day. But it was 8th grade and Sam was no fool. He’d been an 8th grader at four different schools and he knew that day one was like wearing a bright new shirt when you’re on a first date and day fifty one was somewhere near comfortably being able to shower when your partner used the bathroom. Or something like that. He knew that the wolves were circling their prey the minute he’d closed the door and opened up that lame ass first day of school powerpoint they were forced to create, looking for chinks so as to best plan their attack and daring him to show weakness. He was weak. He was terrified of _children_. But he’d never let that part show. He was sure these kids still ran in vicious little packs and would rip him apart quicker than a mountain lion. His lesson went by with only minor hitches and it all became a steady blur of I Do, We Do, You Do over and over until he was sure that he’d have nightmares. Ultimately, he decided to keep this small victory of a first day and prepare for Armageddon all the while hoping it never came. 

What Sam didn't expect was to feel like he'd been hit by a Mac truck by the end of it. No. That was what he felt like at 11:30 during lunch. By four o’clock the bombs had just been dropped and the building had collapsed. He was tired. Tired in a way that not even a full body massage couldn't rectify. That first day glow was almost as deceiving as downing five shots of whiskey, taking home a perfectly gorgeous stranger and waking up to realize that the stranger was your best friend’s girlfriend who would later beg you not to say anything. Not quite up there with seeing her marry said best friend with those same nervous eyes she’d given you post-lazy morning after kiss and right before your colossal meltdown because you didn’t do shit like that. ‘Apparently, you do’ Dean’s smug voice reminds him in his head every single time he thinks about it. The glow wasn’t quite that malignant, but it had stopped him in his tracks with a wide yawn on the way to heat his food in the office because the school couldn’t spring for an actual teacher’s lounge. Apparently trying to keep one's nerves in check after having met 90 perfect strangers and trying to convince them that you were the king of the castle and they were but willing subjects took it out of you. It was a bone-deep weariness that he realized was almost like coming down from an adrenaline high and now his body was screaming at him. He wasn’t quite near the shakes, but it was damn close. Maybe it was the fact that he’d spent the week before in a barrage of professional developments that told him absolutely nothing and the other half of that time trying to fix up his room with Dean who’d grinned like a Cheshire cat when he’d told Sam what he'd gotten up to while Sam saw more numbers and figures than he imagined a skilled data analyst would on the first day of the job. It was all too much. And too much was amplified by the fact that there was no amount of brain bleach to wash away the mental image of Dean in club ‘Oz.’ When Sam really did the math, and his math wasn’t all that great, so three and four didn’t equal seven when he added up his figures, he knew damn well Dean wasn’t talking about the god damned “Wizard of Oz” but more like HBO series ‘Oz,’ sans blowjobs, nakedness included with no extra charge. 

_“Why?”_ was all Sam had managed to scramble out while he pinched the bridge of his nose and asked the gates of hell to swallow him hole. 

Dean had just shrugged in a completely nonchalant and unembarrassed sort of way, stupid, permanent smirk in tow that made Sam feel scared for his brother’s masculinity. But that wasn’t really right because Dean seemed more like an if it fits I’ll fuck it kind of guy, but he was only assuming that his brothers raging horniness was like a tornado that swooped in anything within a twenty mile radius, and Sam had sort of been done with him and his dick a long time ago. 

“I was curious” Dean had said with a lewd smile and waggling eyebrows. “Sammy this is New Orleans and I sure as fuck ain’t gonna be able to get down here every weekend to enjoy the uh, ‘ _fun and culture_ ’,” he punctuated those words but _God why Dean?_ “So I saw a sign and I saw skin and dammit Sammy but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the last stop on my Bourbon Street city tour a little more than the others.” 

Dean, nearly naked men and Dean being near nearly naked men was just a thing, a thing that he didn’t want to imagine. He wanted to imagine it like he wanted to imagine his Sunday school teacher giving a hand job it was so lecherous to his poor soul but at Sam’s wholly constipated look, Dean had burst into a fit of laughter and told him that he’d actually noped into a cartwheel and somersaulted back to the main street when he’d realized that there were no Dorothys on that particular yellow brick road. Sam had visibly relaxed, still suspicious at Dean’s strangely prolonged laughter, but his and his brother’s mutual heterosexuality once again got to bump shoulders in their manliness. It was nice. 

But before Dean had high tailed it back to Kansas with one of those rarely given mythical manly hugs that didn't linger too long, he'd helped Sam bring most of his things into his room. Sam had let his beginning of the year stipend, because teachers were at least worth an additional $500 he’d been told by a particularly jaded veteran, burn a hole in his wallet and he and the cashier at the local teacher supply store became fairly well acquainted. On his tenth trip she’d given him a 10% discount and at that point, Sam decided they had practically become family. It was how he'd found himself struggling with two and a half extra boxes of supplies he for certain figured his gangly arms could carry on their own. 

He couldn't. 

He knew it when the bottom started to give out of one of his boxes and when he shifted his arm to try to keep everything at bay for just a few glorious steps to the front door while praying to the teacher gods to not let him drop all of this in front of anyone who would be able to surreptitiously laugh about it every time they saw him.

Just as his arm began to give way and the top box gave a foreboding tilt, strange hands grabbed his arm to forestall his impending doom or something equally as embarrassing. 

And looking back on it, he steadfastly refused to admit that he yelped. It was quiet. Absolutely so, he swore. They were strange hands in a strange damn city dammit and he was allowed to be taken by surprise. But the amused smirk that accompanied that hand, a strangely milky white hand, was proof positive that it was not a quiet yelp at all.

“Need a hand?” came the guy’s, his new coworker he assumed, strangely lilted question. His hand was still plastered to Sam’s arm, his body pressed close to the boxes so that they wouldn’t fall and Sam could get a better grip of the underside of the box and how the hell was he going to give Sam a hand if his hand was currently pressing into Sam’s brand new southern tan. Sunburn Sam. It’s a sunburn. He needed to start calling it what it was because tans were godly and that horribly patchy thing on his arm was nothing short of hideous. He’d never seen heat like this and there had to be a sun that shone especially for New Orleanians because it made his clothes stick like plaster to his skin and his normal sunblock seem like watered down lotion. Amused guy’s hand was not moving, just pressing into Sam’s arm and it was a nicely warm pressure. Oddly assuring. Warm, still.

Sam wasn’t moving. He wasn’t actually talking and smirk face over there was just saying words that sounded vaguely like ‘voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir’ but he couldn’t be sure if that was really what he’d said or if drinking from the water fountain during lunch had done funny things to his head. The weight on his arm started to press though and Sam’s thoughts wandered back into normal human social territory to realize that he’d probably did the thing again where he started talking to himself when he had an audience who actually expected him to talk to them. 

He chanced a quick glance around, noticing only a few other teachers were scattered about the bus lanes as they ended their evening duty and no one would have noticed the uncomfortably long moments that passed as Sam stood there like a dumbstruck idiot. 

To break the oddity of it all, he did what he was good at. Sam smiled his megawatt, twice a year dental checkup, floss after every meal smile at his blond savior. 

“A hand or two would be great actually” came his incredibly late and perfectly poised response considering he was trying and failing to prove that his gargantuan size was good for something. Supplies get heavy when you pack them. Very fucking heavy. 

“Here, let me—“ the guy started and he finally lifted the box from Sam’s weakening grasp before it fell to the ground and 200 dollars of teacher temptation became a ruined mess on the cracked pavement below. 

“Thanks” he’d responded as the top boxes were hefted off to give his arms some rest to carry the grossly overpacked box. The guy turned then, flashing teeth with a muttered “No problem” and it was a smile that reached his eyes, Sam noticed, in a way that made those little crinkles around his eyes crinkle just a bit more and made the blue of his eyes stand out starkly against the warm August sun and the matching blue of his sky blue button down. People weren’t allowed to make blue look that good. No one. It wasn’t fair. 

The thought made him shift uncomfortably but to the outside observer the box was leaning just a bit too much on his right arm and he’d needed to rebalance. That’s what he told himself, but he had a sneaking suspicion that his colleague’s smile that had transformed from that easy width into something slightly more sure of itself meant that he’d known that Sam had gotten a little lost. 

“You coming legs?” he questioned, small smirk still in place. And Sam, poor Sam, actually looked around because who the fuck is legs? But the guy just motioned for him to come as he trotted up to the front door. 

Sam was grateful for the help because apparently, 8th grade meant that he was forced to work on the third floor without the respite of an elevator and he said as much. 

“Thanks again, man. Saved me two trips up the stairs that I could definitely do without after today” he said taking the stairs two at a time because the guy, and he would actually have to ask his name at some point because “the guy” was getting old fast, was doing just that and he wanted to keep up. 

“Rough first day?” he asked curiously as they rounded the corner to his room and the guy knew right where to go without asking. Sam wondered how he knew where his room was when Sam hadn’t even met him until today. 

“No, no it was actually…good. Way better than I thought it would be” Sam responded happily, sincerely. 

All he got in response, though, was a knowing smile. 

“What?” he hurried to question. “Was it not supposed to be good?”

His newfound acquaintance turned to him then, eyes holding something Sam couldn’t name. 

“Oh it’s always good the first day and the second day and third day,” he said before turning the knob to Sam’s room. “Kids don’t pounce until week three.” 

“So you’re telling me that this is the honeymoon phase?” 

“Something like that,” he said and the look didn’t leave his eyes. “They like to toy with their food before they eat it and by the third week, they’ve got you tied to a chair with a gag while they pretend a real lesson’s happening anytime someone walks by. But good luck legs” he finished not nearly as believable as he may have tried to come off. Sam would need more than luck. He’d need a teacher assistant and a magician to knock out any kid who tried to ask a wayward question. He had neither of those. 

With that he dropped Sam’s box off into the corner Sam had sat his, turned and gave his shoulder a pat and a less than reassuring squeeze and told him that he’d see him around. 

Sam stood dumbfounded for a moment before realizing that he knew that look. It was the same look Dean had given him when he’d told him that he was going to tell John he was leaving for Stanford. Pity. And it made something strange and restricting climb into Sam’s throat. It couldn’t be that bad. 

Could it?

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into Samifer. Please let me know what you think!


End file.
